Lilizela Tourism Awards extends entry deadline

South African Tourism has announced that the entry date for the Lilizela Tourism Awards has been extended to 30 June 2014. The extension was granted to allow more time for product owners who have realised the opportunity they might be losing from not participating in the awards programme.

2 Jun 2014

Lilizela Tourism Awards extends entry deadline

This extension also allows more time for consumers to vote for their favourite establishment.

The Lilizela Tourism Awards is a nationwide tourism industry competition that recognises and honours the country's tourism business owners, across a variety of categories and South African tourism is committed to ensure everyone gets a fair chance of being recognised.

"We have received hundreds of submissions since the competition opened. However, this being a nationwide competition and targeting a wide range of categories in the tourism sector, we want to ensure we allow all interested parties time to submit their applications," says Thulani Nzima, CEO of South African Tourism, custodian of the awards.

Critical for establishment owners to remember is the following:

You can enter your establishment in up to 6 different categories and not just one - this means that a Guest House, for e.g. can enter in the Accommodation Category, the Visitor Experience Category, the B-BBEE Category, the ETEYA Category, the Universal Accessibility Category as well as in the Imvelo Category. This gives you 6 chances to win with the Lilizela Tourism Awards.

Once you have entered, you are allocated a username and password to access the Online Toolkit which you can use to encourage all your guests to vote for your establishment. This includes e-mail signatures, online banners, etc. You will also receive a unique QR code which you can immediately print and ensure that it is displayed prominently for your guests to scan and cast their vote.

You can also send all your guests a ''Thank you for staying with us'' e-mail or phone text message with a link to the voting platform on the Lilizela website for the guest to indicate how happy they were with the experience.

Entries for the Lilizela Tourism Awards close on 30 June. Consumer voting closes on 13 July.

For more, go to www.lilizela.co.za